1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to digital data playing capabilities of portable computer systems and more particularly to a portable computer system with an operating system-independent digital data player.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the recent explosive growth in digital audio playing, standalone or portable digital audio players have largely become mainstream consumer devices. Computer systems, however, are not especially positioned to benefit from the digital audio revolution given the nature of digital audio playing for computer systems. PC-based digital audio players are software applications that must operate with an operating system. For a PC-based digital audio player, an operating system is necessary to provide high-level functionality to perform tasks such as retrieving digital audio files. One drawback of the need for an operating system to play digital audio files with a computer system is the significant amount of time associated with loading an operating system. This period of delay before digital audio playing is undesirable since users with standalone digital audio players are not accustomed to such a delay. Another drawback is the power consumption associated with components in the computer system which are normally powered when an operating system is running. A PC-based digital audio player has required that a main processor be running and that practically the entire computer system be powered. Because of such power consumption issues, the amount of time for which digital audio files may be played in a portable computer powered only by a battery is significantly less than the play time users are accustomed to with standalone digital audio players. Essentially, any PC-like system with an operating system and digital audio playing capabilities has been subject to these sort of drawbacks. PC-based digital audio players thus have been unsuited to playing digital audio files as quickly, as easily or as long as allowed by standalone digital audio players. Further, PC-based digital video players have similar drawbacks.
Briefly, a portable computer system provides an operating system-independent digital data player. The computer system includes an operating system, a data storage medium to store a plurality of digitally encoded data files, and a digital data player to decode and play the plurality of digitally encoded data files in an operating system-independent digital data mode. The data storage medium may be any of the storage media for the computer system such as a hard disk drive, a CD-ROM drive, a DVD drive or removable data storage. The operating system-independent digital data player enables portable computer users to more quickly and easily play digital data files and to increase digital data playing time.